It was a fine spring noon, and the corner of Fourth and Library streets
in Philadelphia was like a rock in the turn of a rapid river, so great
was the crowd of busy business men which flowed past. Just out of the
current a man paused, put down a parcel which he carried, turned it into
a table, placed on it several vials, produced a bundle of hand-bills, and
began, in the language of his tribe, to _cant_--that is, _cantare_, to
sing--the virtues of a medicine which was certainly _patent_ in being
spread out by him to extremest thinness. In an instant there were a
hundred people round him. He seemed to be well known and waited for. I
saw at a glance what he was. The dark eye and brown face indicated a
touch of the _diddikai_, or one with a little gypsy blood in his veins,
while his fluent patter and unabashed boldness showed a long familiarity
with race-grounds and the road, or with the Cheap-Jack and Dutch auction
business, and other pursuits requiring unlimited eloquence and impudence.
How many a man of learning, nay of genius, might have paused and envied
that vagabond the gifts which were worth so little to their possessor!
But what was remarkable about him was that instead of endeavoring to
conceal any gypsy indications, they were manifestly exaggerated. He wore
a broad-brimmed hat and ear-rings and a red embroidered waistcoat of the
most forcible old Romany pattern, which was soon explained by his words.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "I am always sorry to detain a
select and genteel audience. But I was detained myself by a very
interesting incident. I was invited to lunch with a wealthy German
gentleman; a very wealthy German, I say, one of the pillars of your city
and front door-step of your council, and who would be the steeple of your
exchange, if it had one. And on arriving at his house he remarked,
'Toctor, by tam you koom yust in goot dime, for mine frau und die cook
ish bote fall sick mit some-ding in a hoory, und I kess she'll die pooty
quick-sudden.' Unfortunately I had with me, gentlemen, but a single dose
of my world-famous Gypsy's Elixir and Romany Pharmacopheionepenthe.
(That is the name, gentlemen, but as I detest quackery I term it simply
the Gypsy's Elixir.) When the German gentleman learned that in all
probability but one life could be saved he said, 'Veil, denn, doctor,
subbose you gifes dat dose to de cook. For mine frau ish so goot dat
it's all right mit her. She's reaty to tie. But de boor gook ish a
sinner, ash I knows, und not reaty for de next world. And dere ish no
vomans in town dat can gook mine sauer-kraut ash she do.' Fortunately,
gentlemen, I found in an unknown corner of a forgotten pocket an
unsuspected bottle of the Gypsy's Elixir, and both interesting lives were
saved with such promptitude, punctuality, neatness and dispatch that the
cook proceeded immediately to conclude the preparation of our
meal--(thank you sir,--one dollar, if you please, sir. You say I only
charged half a dollar yesterday! That was for a smaller bottle, sir.
Same size, as this, was it? Ah, yes, I gave you a large bottle by
mistake,--so you owe me fifty cents. Never mind, don't give it back.
I'll take the half dollar.")
All of this had been spoken with the utmost volubility. As I listened I
almost fancied myself again in England, and at a country fair. Taking in
his audience at a glance, I saw his eye rest on me ere it flitted, and he
resumed,--
"We gypsies are, as you know, a remarkable race, and possessed of certain
rare secrets, which have all been formulated, concentrated, dictated, and
plenipotentiarated into this idealized Elixir. If I were a mountebank or
a charlatan I would claim that it cures a hundred diseases. Charlatan is
a French word for a quack. I speak French, gentlemen; I speak nine
languages, and can tell you the Hebrew for an old umbrella. The Gypsy's
Elixir cures colds, gout, all nervous affections, with such cutaneous
disorders as are diseases of the skin, debility, sterility, hostility,
and all the illities that flesh is heir to except what it can't, such as
small-pox and cholera. It has cured cholera, but it don't claim to do
it. Others claim to cure, but can't. I am not a charlatan, but an
Ann-Eliza. That is the difference between me and a lady, as the pig said
when he astonished his missus by blushing at her remarks to the postman.
(_Better have another bottle_, _sir_. _Haven't you the change_? _Never
mind_, _you can owe me fifty cents_. _I know a gentleman when I see
one_.) I was recently Down East in Maine, where they are so patriotic,
they all put the stars and stripes into their beds for sheets, have the
Fourth of July three hundred and sixty-five times in the year, and eat
the Declaration of Independence for breakfast. And they wouldn't buy a
bottle of my Gypsy's Elixir till they heard it was good for the
Constitution, whereupon they immediately purchased my entire stock.
Don't lose time in securing this invaluable blessing to those who feel
occasional pains in the lungs. This is not taradiddle. I am engaged to
lecture this afternoon before the Medical Association of Germantown, as
on Wednesday before the University of Baltimore; for though I sell
medicine here in the streets, it is only, upon my word of honor, that the
poor may benefit, and the lowly as well as the learned know how to prize
the philanthropic and eccentric gypsy."
He run on with his patter for some time in this vein, and sold several
vials of his panacea, and then in due time ceased, and went into a
bar-room, which I also entered. I found him in what looked like
prospective trouble, for a policeman was insisting on purchasing his
medicine, and on having one of his hand-bills. He was remonstrating,
when I quietly said to him in Romany, "Don't trouble yourself; you were
not making any disturbance." He took no apparent notice of what I said
beyond an almost imperceptible wink, but soon left the room, and when I
had followed him into the street, and we were out of ear-shot, he
suddenly turned on me and said,--
"Well, you _are_ a swell, for a Romany. How do you do it up to such a
high peg?"
"Do what?"
"Do the whole lay,--look so gorgeous?"
"Why, I'm no better dressed than you are,--not so well, if you come to
that _vongree_" (waistcoat).
"'T isn't _that_,--'t isn't the clothes. It's the air and the style.
Anybody'd believe you'd had no end of an education. I could make ten
dollars a patter if I could do it as natural as you do. Perhaps you'd
like to come in on halves with me as a bonnet. _No_? Well, I suppose
you have a better line. You've been lucky. I tell you, you astonished
me when you _rakkered_, though I spotted you in the crowd for one who was
off the color of the common Gorgios,--or, as the Yahudi say, the _Goyim_.
No, I carn't _rakker_, or none to speak of, and noways as deep as you,
though I was born in a tent on Battersea Common and grew up a fly fakir.
What's the drab made of that I sell in these bottles? Why, the old fake,
of course,--you needn't say _you_ don't know that. _Italic good
English_. Yes, I know I do. A fakir is bothered out of his life and
chaffed out of half his business when he drops his _h_'s. A man can do
anything when he must, and I must talk fluently and correctly to succeed
in such a business. _Would I like a drop of something_? You paid for
the last, now you must take a drop with me. _Do I know of any Romany's
in town_? Lots of them. There is a ken in Lombard Street with a regular
fly mort,--but on second thoughts we won't go there,--_and_--oh, I say--a
very nice place in --- Street. The landlord is a Yahud; his wife can
_rakker_ you, I'm sure. _She's_ a good lot, too."
And while on the way I will explain that my acquaintance was not to be
regarded as a real gypsy. He was one of that large nomadic class with a
tinge of gypsy blood who have grown up as waifs and strays, and who,
having some innate cleverness, do the best they can to live without
breaking the law--much. They deserve pity, for they have never been
cared for; they owe nothing to society for kindness, and yet they are
held even more strictly to account by the law than if they had been
regularly Sunday-schooled from babyhood. This man when he spoke of
Romanys did not mean real gypsies; he used the word as it occurs in
Ainsworth's song of
"Nix my dolly, pals fake away.
And here I am both tight and free,
A regular rollicking Romany."
For he meant _Bohemian_ in its widest and wildest sense, and to him all
that was apart from the world was _his_ world, whether it was Rom or
Yahudi, and whether it conversed in Romany or Schmussen, or any other
tongue unknown to the Gentiles. He had indeed no home, and had never
known one.
It was not difficult to perceive that the place to which he led me was
devoted in the off hours to some other business besides the selling of
liquor. It was neat and quiet, in fact rather sleepy; but its card,
which was handed to me, stated in a large capital head-line that it was
OPEN ALL NIGHT, and that there was pool at all hours. I conjectured that
a little game might also be performed there at all hours, and that, like
the fountain of Jupiter Ammon, it became livelier as it grew later, and
that it certainly would not be on the full boil before midnight.
"_Scheiker fur mich_, _der Isch will jain soreff shaskenen_" (Beer for me
and brandy for him), I said to the landlord, who at once shook my hand
and saluted me with _Sholem_! Even so did Ben Daoud of Jerusalem, not
long ago. Ben knew me not, and I was buying a pocket-book of him at his
open-air stand in Market Street, and talking German, while he was
endeavoring to convince me that I ought to give five cents more for it
than I had given for a similar case the day before, on the ground that it
was of a different color, or under color that the leather had a different
ground, I forget which. In talking I let fall the word _kesef_ (silver).
In an instant Ben had taken my hand, and said _Sholem aleichum_, and "Can
you talk Spanish?"--which was to show that he was superfine Sephardi, and
not common Ashkenaz.
"Yes," resumed the crocus-fakir; "a man must be able to talk English very
fluently, pronounce it correctly, and, above all things, keep his temper,
if he would do anything that requires chanting or pattering. _How did I
learn it_? A man can learn to do anything when it's business and his
living depends on it. The people who crowd around me in the streets
cannot pronounce English decently; not one in a thousand here can say
_laugh_, except as a sheep says it. Suppose that you are a Cheap Jack
selling things from a van. About once in an hour some tipsy fellow tries
to chaff you. He hears your tongue going, and that sets his off. He
hears the people laugh at your jokes, and he wants them to laugh at his.
When you say you're selling to raise money for a burned-out widow, he
asks if she isn't your wife. Then you answer him, 'No, but the
kind-hearted old woman who found you on the door-step and brought you up
to the begging business.' If you say you are selling goods under cost,
it's very likely some yokel will cry out, 'Stolen, hey?' And you patter
as quick as lightning, 'Very likely; I thought your wife sold 'em to me
too cheap for the good of somebody's clothes-line.' If you show yourself
his superior in language awd wit, the people will buy better; they always
prefer a gentleman to a cad. Bless me! why, a swell in a dress-coat and
kid gloves, with good patter and hatter, can sell a hundred rat-traps
while a dusty cad in a flash kingsman would sell one. As for the
replies, most of them are old ones. As the men who interrupt you are
nearly all of the same kind, and have heads of very much the same make,
with an equal number of corners, it follows that they all say nearly the
same things. Why, I've heard two duffers cry out the same thing at once
to me. So you soon have answers cut and dried for them. We call 'em
_cocks_, because they're just like half-penny ballads, all ready printed,
while the pitcher always has the one you want ready at his finger-ends.
It is the same in all canting. I knew a man once who got his living by
singing of evenings in the gaffs to the piano, and making up verses on
the gentlemen and ladies as they came in; and very nice verses he made,
too,--always as smooth as butter. _How do you do it_? I asked him one
day. 'Well, you wouldn't believe it,' said he; 'but they're mostly
cocks. The best ones I buy for a tanner [sixpence] apiece. If a tall
gentleman with a big beard comes in, I strike a deep chord and sing,--
"'This tall and handsome party,
With such a lot of hair,
Who seems so grand and hearty,
Must be a _militaire_;
We like to see a swell come
Who looks so _distingue_,
So let us bid him welcome,
And hope he'll find us gay.'
"The last half can be used for anybody. That's the way the improvisatory
business is managed for visitors. Why, it's the same with
fortune-telling. _You have noticed that_. Well, if the Gorgios had, it
would have been all up with the fake long ago. The old woman has the
same sort of girls come to her with the same old stories, over and over
again, and she has a hundred dodges and gets a hundred straight tips
where nobody else would see anything; and of course she has the same
replies all ready. There is nothing like being glib. And there's really
a great deal of the same in the regular doctor business, as I know,
coming close on to it and calling myself one. Why, I've been called into
a regular consultation in Chicago, where I had an office,--'pon my honor
I was, and no great honor neither. It was all patter, and I pattered 'em
dumb."
I began to think that the fakir could talk forever and ever faster. If
he excelled in his business, he evidently practiced at all times to do
so. I intimated as much, and he at once proceeded fluently to illustrate
this point also.
"You hear men say every day that if they only had an education they would
do great things. What it would all come to with most of them is that
they would _talk_ so as to shut other men up and astonish 'em. They have
not an idea above that. I never had any schooling but the roads and
race-grounds, but I can talk the hat off a lawyer, and that's all I can
do. Any man of them could talk well if he tried; but none of them will
try, and as they go through life, telling you how clever they'd have been
if somebody else had only done something for them, instead of doing
something for themselves. So you must be going. Well, I hope I shall
see you again. Just come up when you're going by and say that your wife
was raised from the dead by my Elixir, and that it's the best medicine
you ever had. And if you want to see some regular tent gypsies, there's
a camp of them now just four miles from here; real old style Romanys. Go
out on the road four miles, and you'll find them just off the
side,--anybody will show you the place. _Sarishan_!"
I was sorry to read in the newspaper, a few days after, that the fakir
had been really arrested and imprisoned for selling a quack medicine.
For in this land of liberty it makes an enormous difference whether you
sell by advertisement in the newspapers or on the sidewalk, which shows
that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, even in a
republic.